A Journey with ABBA

When I was ten, I hid a small transistor radio underneath my pillow at night, listening to the Top 9 at 9:00. With the volume as close to zero as possible (sound was louder at night, especially if I heard parents coming up the stairs toward my bedroom), I’d wait and wait until “Waterloo” by ABBA came bounding onto the countdown: “Waterloo / Promise to love you forever more.”

As I grew, I’d await each new ABBA song to reach Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 program on Sunday, rooting on “The Name of the Game” or “Chiquitita” to reach the highest spots. At the checkout stand at K-Mart, I asked Mom if I could add the ABBA single “Take a Chance on Me” for $1.19 to our order. She always said yes. Promise to love you forever more.

When I didn’t have my license yet, I’d ask Dad to take me to Peaches or Record Bar. He always said yes, and I’d buy the newest ABBA 45 on the red and black Atlantic label, as intrigued by the flip side of the records as much as the a-side. Their 1979 b-side “Kisses of Fire” was as good as “Does Your Mother Know.” I slowly learned to look beyond the hits, beyond the surface of ABBA and myself. Promise to love you forever more.

As I got older I paid for records new and used with money I earned. I only ever bought one ABBA album, though, a used copy of their second LP Waterloo, which I found at a used store in Largo. I knew nearly every ABBA song, due to the 4 CD compilation Thank You for the Music, which I cherished somewhat privately, for it wasn’t always cool to admit. Despite this thorough set, I had never heard the albums as separate entities. I was still getting to know ABBA, still getting to know myself. Promise to love you forever more.

Years later, I purchased a box set of ABBA’s LPs reissued on 180g vinyl. Yesterday, while reading selected chapters from books on ABBA by Simon Sheridan and John Tobler, I listened from start to finish to all eight ABBA albums, from Ring Ring (1974) through The Visitors (1982). I could trace the development of the band, the songwriting, production values, and singing styles. I could notice themes like courage and self-empowerment emerge and relive the search for these qualities in myself. I could notice the undercurrent of melancholy in the upbeat songs I’d heard dozens of times, such as “When I Kissed the Teacher,” “Dancing Queen,” and “Super Trouper,” among others, and accept that with love there is pain and with agony there can be joy. I could understand the sublime ache of “The Winner Takes it All,” a song Sheridan describes as a “mesmerizing concoction of lush heartbroken harmonies and a beautiful claustrophobic melody,” their last big hit that expressed the mood of the band after their personal relationships had ended but they still worked together as a group. Promise to love you forever more.

I could sense now what I hadn’t been able to know in 1982: that the end of ABBA had arrived, with the two final, lovely, tracks on their last album The Visitors: “Slipping through My Fingers,” about Bjorn and Agnetha’s daughter growing up, and “Like an Angel Passing through My Room,” a haunting epilogue that begins and ends with a clock ticking. ABBA had ended and so had my childhood.

As I journeyed for 6 hours through the eight albums, I could hear the clock ticking for me as well, taking me from a boy who hid a transistor radio underneath my pillow, whose parents indulged him, to an adult who gained and lost family, friends, and loves, while through it all, even when I wasn’t listening intently to them, ABBA was always there beside me … forever more.